Madagascar: A Short History (review)

According to the authors, Solofo Randrianja and Stephen Ellis, Madagascar: A Short History is the fruit of their combined "fifty years" of research and writing. In addition to their dedication and persistence, we ought also to salute these two authors for their invaluable contribution to the general history of Madagascar with this book. Indeed, as they noted, "the only history of Madagascar in English that is still extant was written by a British diplomat who served as his country's ambassador to the island" (2). That reference was A History of Madagascar by Mervyn Brown (Damien Tunnacliffe, 1995). In this sense, Madagascar: A Short History is a welcome addition to the rare academic references (especially in English) on the general history of Madagascar.

Overall, the first two chapters on the premodern history of Madagascar (chapter 1—"Settlement, 400–1099"; chapter 2—"Transforming the Island, 1100–1599") are based more on speculation than on tangible evidence. Like many other authors before them, Randrianja and Ellis had to rely in these chapters on sketchy archeological and cultural evidence in order to trace the origins of the Malagasy people and their settlement on the island. The remaining chapters, however, are based on a variety of written documents left not only by European explorers, adventurers, missionaries, and public officials, but also by Malagasy officials and citizens.

One of the most interesting chapters of the book is chapter 5, "The Kingdom of Madagascar, 1817–1895." It is worth noting that according to the prevalent view, the relationship between the Merina kingdom (which would become the Kingdom of Madagascar with King Radama I, 1818– 1828) and the British kingdom was a model of cooperation between a powerful European country and a traditional African country in the nineteenth century. Through this cooperation, the Kingdom of Madagascar embraced modernization (or the European civilization) wholeheartedly and was recognized and respected by other European powers and the United States. The two authors shed new light on this cooperation and debunk what has been accepted as common knowledge, by showing that the modernization of the Kingdom of Madagascar in the nineteenth century was in fact a thin veneer on top of a traditional, oligarchic, and tyrannical regime.

However, my main criticism of the book concerns the deliberate rejection of the formal independence of Madagascar in 1960. Surprisingly, the two authors dismiss this formal independence as a "myth" (177–182). Consequently, they include the first decade of the independence of the country (1960 to 1972) in chapter 6, entitled "The French Period" (1896–1972), and begin what they suppose to be the independence period in 1973 with chapter 7, entitled "An Island in the World (1973–2002)." Their justification of this rejection is, nonetheless, contradictory. Indeed, while conceding that Madagascar was formally recognized by the international community "as a sovereign republic" in 1960, and was fully admitted as a member state of the United Nations with its own flag and national anthem, the authors still try to argue that

This [independence] did not either cause or signify any profound change in the nature of Madagascar's relations with France. . . . Madagascar's First Republic was often regarded as a neocolonial regime, and this was an accurate perception insofar as the island's formal independence did not in itself signify a radical break with France. Such a break occurred more than a decade later, somewhere between the revolution of 1972, with its anti-imperialist rhetoric, and the agreement with the World Bank in 1980.

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In fact, the sine qua non of a country's independence in modern international relations is its "international recognition." Thus, once a country is recognized by the international community as independent, the nature of its relations with another country (France, in this case) does not matter at all and cannot change its status. Furthermore, for millions of Malagasy people, the independence of their country on June 26, 1960, was not a "myth." It was as...